


Moscow Files

by AZ-5 (elim_garak)



Category: Homeland
Genre: Angst, Borderline mature content, Canon Compliant, Drabble Collection, F/M, gropping in the darkness mostly, i suck at this so I wouldn't know, mabye
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-02
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:47:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24504901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elim_garak/pseuds/AZ-5
Summary: Series of drabbles from the missing two years period. Mainly snippets.*NOT*chronological, keep in mind!Chapter 3THE LONELY SAILis new, posted on June 9, 2020“There isalwaysa way out, Carrie” he says. “And from what I’ve seen, you know this better than anyone.”“No,” she shakes her head. “No.Once. Maybe. But not from this. Not anymore.”“I’ve seen you dig yourself out of worse.”She scoffs, flinging her arm around her. “Worse thanthis?”
Relationships: Carrie Mathison/Yevgeny Gromov
Comments: 49
Kudos: 72





	1. Fall, fall together

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sh_ua](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sh_ua/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've never written mature content before. Like NEVER EVER. So... *crawls away*

“More coffee?” he asks. 

She looks up, a little startled, as the cogs in her head - all thousand of them - come to a screeching halt. 

She smiles, radiant, unabashed, head tilted, eyes partly lidded and lax. “Yes. Thank you.” 

He gallantly rises (gallantly being a bold stretch seeing as he’s wearing a sleep-wrinkled t-shirt and an old pair of basketball shorts), circles the table, pours, pedals back. 

She gropes for her mug without taking her eyes off his case report propped on her pulled-up knee, draws a long sip, flips the page. 

He watches her for a long moment, seated across the table from him, wearing his old CSKA tank top that reaches just under her hips, and nothing - _nothing_ \- else. 

She’s like a drug, a mind-bending hallucinogen he swears off every morning and craves again as soon as the first flashback splashes all over his mind, like it does now, like he would sell his soul to slide his hands under the soft fabric, just once, feel her, breathe her, need her, _again_. Because he does, need her, more than he needed anything, ever, more than he thought it possible - for him, for anyone - to need. 

He doesn’t know what it is, how she does this, night after night, turns her pain into fire that burns through him until his pain is exposed too, how her rage and despair, unleashed, touch the loneliness inside him, how they soar and crash and soar again and fall, fall, fall, together. 

“Almost done,” she says, barely an afterthought, flipping another page. 

And he circles the table again, nothing gallant about it this time, and kneels besides her. 

“Well, hello,” she smiles. _Smiles._ God, that smile, the way her head tilts just a little, and her nose wrinkles, just the tiniest bit, and the shimmering wheat of her hair falls on these maddeningly bare shoulders. 

He says nothing, eyes locked onto hers as he places a hand on her knee, slides it up, and up, and higher, the air siphoning out of his lungs until there’s none, and he lets it, lets his mind go blank, and his body empty. 

Her eyes darken, in slow motion, vingheting inwards as his hand grips that place where her hip meets her waist. 

She pushes him back, once, twice, and he stumbles, and flops, and catches her, just in time, as she slides on top, dazed and wild, panting already, and so, so... 

“Fuck,” he hisses as her hand finds its way under the band of his boxers. 

Wet and sloppy, he can taste the reply on her breath. “Yeah.” 

She slams - _slams_ \- onto him, and he cries out, hands on her hips, fingers deep in her flesh, so deep he’s sure he’ll leave bruises, and he hates it, he does, yet he slams - _slams_ \- his hips upwards like he wants to split her in two, reach places inside her of which he’s only seen glimpses, all the things she has locked away. 

“Harder,” she cries, not tearing her eyes from his, like she dares him, dares him to see, dares him to _look_ even. 

And he does, he looks, and he sees, and her mouth falls slack in a silent scream as he lifts her up, and up, and jams her back onto him, and again. 

It’s over, in minutes, maybe less. He tumbles over the edge, he thinks, just from watching her come undone, writhing, clenching, sobbing, with pleasure, or pain, or both. 

For what feels like eternity her hands remain wedged in his bare abdomen, his - clasping her hips. Eyes still locked, they are both panting, gasping for air, and, maybe - hopefully - more. He’s still twitching inside her, and he feels nothing else but the dark, bottomless void - in her life, in her soul, in her body - he knows he will never fill. 

He pulls on her hand and she half-folds, half-crumbles against him, a creased, boneless mess. 

“I know,” he whispers, cradling her head in his palm as she buries her face in the fold of his neck and shoulder, deep, and deeper, like she wants to dissolve, disappear inside him, and hide. “I know.” 

She doesn’t reply, but her arm slinks around him, up his chest, his neck, a hand on his face. He slides his fingers into the thick of her hair, deep, and deeper, and tugs, just a little, treading the edges of rough, maybe, but so, so gentle still. 

“Кроха моя,” he breathes after God knows how much time has passed in the vacuum of silence. 

And his heart spills open, gallons of guilt and rage and regret, as she stirs in his arms, softly, drowsily, as she presses a wet smile to the side of his neck. “I still don’t know what it means,” she hums. And adds, “...exactly.” 

He just grins, wide, staring straight at the ceiling. 

“It is hard to translate.” 

She snorts. “Yeah, you said.” 

“I mean it. It’s…” He exhales, loudly. 

“...hard to translate?” she quips. 

He laughs. “Yeah.” 

The thing is, he doesn’t know what it means, either. He knows what it _means,_ yes, in the literal sense, but not what it means that he says it, the way he says it, that he needs to say this in Russian, that he says it to her, every time, and nobody else. Ever. 

That sometimes it feels like it’s not really he that says it. But a different man. 

From way back. 

Past who he is or who he’s become in the course of the last decades. 

The man he's almost forgotten he wanted to be. 

Once. 


	2. Stuck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> > “What is this really about, Carrie?” he asks when the silence becomes too much to bear.
>> 
>> She stifles a bitter snort, closing her eyes for a brief moment. “This,” she rasps, motioning around his bedroom. “All of this. Taking me in. Acting like you care. Like you’ve ever given a flying fuck.”
>> 
>> He glares at her from under incredulously raised eyebrows. “And you think I don’t?”
>> 
>> “You’re full of shit, is what _I_ think.”  
> 

She held it together.

At first.

For four months she held it together in the basement of an old, half-forsaken detention facility on the outskirts of Moscow. Under guard, and in nearly full isolation, she spent her days never knowing when the lock on the door would rattle and she would be yanked out of bed for another round of interrogations.

When they ran out of questions and tricks she was granted _“conditional release”_ into his _“custody”._ _“Conditional”_ implying they’d reserved the right to call her back for _“follow-up questions should such arise”_ whenever they saw fit.

Which they did, for _another_ five weeks; and she held it together through that as well.

It was not being put through the wringer that broke her, he thinks, but the silence that came after, the _what-now_ of it all, the days and nights spent looking forward to nothing but more days and nights.

 _Temporary setback,_ they called it, the doctors did, some of the best specialists in Moscow, _post-traumatic anxiety, delayed reaction to a life-changing event._

He remembers them flinging those terms like they meant nothing, _“not unheard of in her condition”._ He remembers hearing _compulsive behaviour, excessive preoccupation with details, increasingly elaborate rituals_ and struggling to match the big words with the images of Carrie’s foot starting to tap whenever he’d move the salt to the wrong side of the table, or the light switch in her room flipped on and off three, then four, then five times and more before she could go to sleep.

It moved - no, _snowballed_ \- from quirky to peculiar to worrisome to downright debilitating in less than a week.

In two it’d gotten so bad he was forced to have her committed.

In three - she was back.

She doesn’t sleep much these days. Most of the time she stays in her room downstairs - a sort-of-temporary arrangement they’ve agreed on - curled on her side, staring off into space, drifting in and out of awareness he imagines to be a pit just as dark as her restless sleep.

She doesn’t cry, doesn’t talk much, either. He wishes she did. Wishes she’d yell at him, call him out, blame him, do _something_ \- anything but having to watch the life go out of her eyes with each passing day.

They have a routine, of sorts. They eat together, at least twice a day, mostly in silence. They sit together, on different sides of his couch, watching the ten o’clock news, sometimes past that. On some evenings, if the weather allows it, they go for a long, quiet walk.

At night she wanders.

He knows this because he finds her come morning, huddling in all manner of corners and hiding places, some whose existence came as a shock of an eye-opener even for him.

So when he wakes up tonight to find her curled in a ball on the sill of his bedroom window, he isn’t surprised.

This isn’t the first time. He doesn’t know why she comes, doesn’t know if she comes every night, either; is it the view from his room that she likes better, or is it a need to have him - or _someone_ \- around.

He wants to ask her. Every day he thinks about choosing the best timing. If she smiles, he decides, if she says or asks something when he tells her stories of places they pass on their long walks, if she looks up from her perch on the far side of her bed when he peeks in later to bid her goodnight.

But she never does, and he won’t push her, won’t have her crumble again, spiral out of control, tumble down that same rabbit hole where he wouldn’t be able to follow. Because he can’t - he _can’t,_ _HE CAN’T -_ take her back to that place, not ever again.

There’s a strange sense of peace, of comfort, of solace in having her near; in hoping she seeks the same near him. Yet on nights like this, unsure if she’s even aware of his being alert to her presence, he feels like a prowler, an intruder in his own bedroom, trespassing where he doesn't belong.

Sometimes, he wants to peel off his covers, swing his legs off the side of the bed, cross over, and put his arms where the grief stripped her bare.

But he never does.

And on most such nights, he lies still, heart so high in his throat he can barely squeeze the air past it, until, inevitably, his eyelids begin grow heavy, and he reluctantly slips back into the gaping abyss of uneasy sleep.

Tonight, he closes his eyes and reaches into the depths of his memory to piece together the view from his bedroom window. He wonders if she sees what he sees - a vast denim dome speckled with stars on the nights that the air is clear, aglow with an opaline halo of blazing lights - or if all she’ll ever see is her self-imposed prison where she’s been sentenced to life without parole.

“You really love it,” she says without tearing her eyes from where she’s been staring off into space out the frosted window.

He’s jolted out of his reverie, not by her voice, barely past whisper, but her words, the ways she speaks them, the way they fall into the stream of his thoughts as if this whole time they’ve been conversing out loud.

“Why?” she asks, before he’s gotten a chance to figure out what to answer, or whether he was supposed to answer at all.

He pulls himself up on his elbows until he’s half-seated against the headboard.

He could say it’s because it’s home, always has been, that he’s lived here his whole life. He could say he loves it for the places deep in the heart of it whose streets he can tread for hours, because losing himself to their spellbinding, solemn grandeur is the most found he’s ever been.

Instead, rubbing his eyes officially open, he gives her a soft smile.

“It has… _character,"_ he quips.

But what he really means to say is...

_...it’s known more misery and injustice, hunger and poverty, than most world's capitals put together. For centuries it’s been shredded by wars, burnt to the ground, reduced to a pile of rubble. Yet here it stands, paved with the bones of the people who loved it, reborn from its own ruins, drowned in brilliant light._

“Do you have a favorite?” she asks, tearing her gaze from where it’s been anchored for hours and finally turning to meet his. “All these places you’ve shown me,” she adds when he takes too long to gather his thoughts. “Do you have a favorite?”

He thinks, closing his eyes for a moment, fetching that image again, like a sailor trying to find the right bearing in the shimmering sea of the city stretching outside.

“Two o’clock,” he says finally. “Three, maybe four miles away. Just past the neon tower. A square of bright yellow lights.”

She takes one look. _One._ And she says, “That’s… Stary Arbat, no?”

He’s stunned speechless. “Did I take you there?”

She shakes her head.

“Wow,” he whistles under his breath, slinking both eyebrows. “That’s… some top-drawer spatial orientation.”

He can’t see very well, but he’s almost certain that earned him at least half a smile.

“Do you go there often?”

He shrugs.

“Used to. Every Sunday that I wasn’t away. Used to walk all the way there, spend an hour or two just… wandering. Walk back.”

“But not anymore.”

“Not since we got back, no.”

There’s a long pause again.

“You should go.” He opens his mouth to say something, not even sure what, but... “You should _go._ You shouldn’t be stuck here with me all the time.”

He draws a long breath through his nose. “I’m not _stuck_ here with you, Carrie.”

She scoffs.

“Carrie…”

She faces him fully now. “So, what’s the plan?” she asks, her voice, her bone-icy tone, even the way she sits sending chills through his body.

“The plan?” he frowns.

“Yeah. The plan. You’re a planner, no? So you _must_ have a plan. Must have had one in place from the moment we left Ramallah. So? What is it? What’s your big plan for…” She angrily motions around. “...whatever the fuck _this_ is.”

He sits up fully now, leaning forward, head turned slightly towards her, elbows wedged on his blanket-draped knees. “What makes you think I need a plan?”

She arranges her face in an expression that’s half derision, half something he’s not sure he wants to know a name of.

“Give me a fucking break, will you? It’s not like I don’t know how this works, remember? You’re not just stuck _here_ with me. You’re _stuck_ with me, period. The moment I stepped off that plane, the plane that _you_ put me on, I’ve become dead weight. All those questions, all those interrogations, it’s all horseshit. I’m not some dissident journalist requesting asylum. I’m an enemy intelligence officer. They’ll _never_ trust me. And you? You’re a hero. Sure. For _now._ But if you don’t cut me loose, and soon, you’ll find yourself with your big raise and your glorious promotion in your shiny new corner office shredding the Company papers for the rest of your life.”

He draws another breath to retort, but it flows out empty.

It’s not that he doesn’t know she’s right, and it’s not that he hasn’t considered this, either. He’s been telling himself he’s been pulled from the field temporarily, just until they sort this out. _This_ being _her,_ of course. But deep down he’s always known better. He’s the new GRU poster-boy, like she says - for _now._ But sooner or later, if nothing changes, if he doesn’t find a way to contain the damage he’s done to his career by bringing an enemy combatant into his country, into his _home,_ he’ll be forced to make the choice he’s been dreading from the moment the wheels of her plane touched the tarmac.

“So?” she jibes, raising both eyebrows.

“So _what?”_ he barks back. “What do you want me to say, Carrie? That I don’t have a plan? I don’t. _Yet._ But I’m working on it.”

She bobs her head slowly, mouth curved down in a mockingly impressed manner. “Care to share?”

He gives her a hard, brow-wrinkled stare. “With an _enemy intelligence officer?_ No. Not really.”

She huffs in disdain, shaking her head. “Right.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She rolls her eyes. “Cut the bullshit is what it means,” she spits. “You’re not my handler. You got what you wanted. You can drop the act.”

“The act? What act, Carrie? I understand you’re angry, and I don’t blame you, but...”

“Pfft… _Do_ you now?”

He exhales through his nose, struggling to keep his voice level. “I don’t blame you,” he repeats. “You think I used you. Fine. I used you. You trusted me and I betrayed you. But Carrie…” He spreads his arms. “You said it yourself. You’re damaged goods. You’re a liability to my country and a traitor to yours. What possible reason would I have for playing you _now?”_

If that hits a nerve, she doesn’t show it. “Oh, I’m sure you’ll think of _something.”_

There’s a long pause in which neither one of them speaks.

“What is this really about, Carrie?” he asks when the silence becomes too much to bear.

She stifles a bitter snort, closing her eyes for a brief moment. “This,” she rasps, motioning around his bedroom. “All of this. Taking me in. Acting like you care. Like you’ve ever given a flying fuck.”

He glares at her from under incredulously raised eyebrows. “And you think I don’t?”

“You’re full of shit is what _I_ think.”

For a long while her words hang between them.

He nods, slowly, looking down at his hands before raising his eyes to meet hers again. “Ok.”

More silence.

“Ok?” she dares.

“Yes. _Ok._ If that’s what you really think then...” he shrugs. “... ok.”

She scoffs again, rolling her eyes as she swings her legs off the window sill and heads for the door.

“You’re _wrong,”_ he says when she’s halfway there.

She slows down, hesitates, then stops. “Why?” she quips with a thin-veiled contempt. “And don’t give me the bullshit about what happened in the asylum.”

“Why not?”

She comes closer, standing over him now, right next to his bed. And she leans forward, a narrow-eyed glare burning holes in his face.

“You think I blame you?” She snorts. “Don’t… _flatter_ yourself. Because blaming you would imply that what you did to me was _personal._ But it wasn’t, was it? I was a captured enemy agent. And what you did… withdrawing my medication, stripping me of my last shreds of humanity, watching me claw my nails bloody at those white tiles at night, flinging my waste at your people…” She shakes her head. “You systematically pulled me apart. For _months._ And then you swung in at the most opportune moment. You _‘saved my life’,_ and you _‘managed to put me back on my meds for a couple of weeks there’._ A _‘couple of weeks’_ ,” she spits. “...out of _seven months_ I was there. You show me some kindness, take me for long walks in the birch forest, have me bare my soul to you…”

For the first time since the day they left for Ramallah her face wobbles, and her voice breaks.

“You think I don’t know what it’s called, Yevgeny?” She leans closer. “You think I’ve never recruited an asset?” And closer still. “You don’t think I know what it feels like? The guilt, when they finally break? The look in their eyes when they finally trust you?”

He uses every ounce of his will power to steady his voice, holding her teary, fluttering stare. “Carrie, you’re _wrong,”_ he says, measuring every word. “I know you think this. And I know it makes sense. But that wasn’t what happened.”

Her face is a wobbling mess now, every muscle twitching. “Like hell it wasn’t,” she mouths. “You _knew_ what withdrawing my medication would do to me. And you fucking did it anyway. You broke me. You put me back together again. And you _used_ me. And now you’ve got me here, in your house, day after day, a walking, breathing reminder of what you did. And it _hurts._ I _know_ it does, believe me. I’ve _been_ there.”

There’s barely an inch separating their faces when she breathes her last words for the night.

“Damn you to hell,” she hisses. “Damn you to _fucking_ hell, Yevgeny. Because here I am. And whatever you _think_ you feel, whatever you think happened between us, I _hope_ it hurts. And I hope it hurts for a long, _long_ time.”


	3. The Lonely Sail

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a continuation of chapter 2, so, despite what the work summary suggest, this one IS chronological.

What was the name of that movie?

She awakes the following morning with this question nibbling at the curves of reasserting reality. 

It drives her insane that she can’t remember. It drives her insane- _er_ that any attempt to remember involves tapping into an image she’d rather forget.

 _The Russian three musketeers,_ he called it. She called _the GRU variation on the Thousand and One Night._

She can see it, in her mind’s eye, feel it, smell it, deep in her bones: the metal frame of a narrow bed, the coolness of damp sheets where her cheek is snuggled into the makeshift pillow, white-tiled walls closing in on her, on _them,_ his face, grey and ashen in the flickering light that gives her headaches. They are face to face, knee to knee, on that bed, in that room, fully clothed, layers and layers because it’s cold, so, so cold. She’s shaking, teeth clattering, nothing, not even his hand, big and warm splayed over the side of her face, can keep it at bay.

He tells her the story. It’s a movie, he says, _“no, miniseries they call it today, no?”,_ four parts, about the adventures of three russian naval cadets who saved their country. There’s a spy plot, she remembers this much. Something about the papers from someone's safe that if fallen into the wrong hands would irreparably compromise one of Zarina’s closest advisers. 

He tells her a little bit every night. She can’t sleep, hanging on every word, on the sound of his voice, on the breath of his laugh on her face when he tells her his mother calls him a _“sap”_ for still having the DVD of the movie he loved as a small child. It’s a story about love, he tells her, _“romantic love, sure, that too, but love for Russia like only Russians can feel.”_

What was the name?

She awakes, and it’s quiet. The house, but not just, it’s her, too. Gently nudged by awareness, her consciousness stirs, ever so gently, barely touching the place where her thoughts begin before quickly retracting the tentacles. Not yet.

The sun barges into her room through the large window in chunks of silvery streaks, stooping where it meets the floor and from there reaching uninterruptedly all the way to the opposite wall. 

Inside, where her thoughts are, where she keeps the boxes once filled with faces and words and now with shards, there’s instead a sea of tranquility, not even a gentle breeze to wrinkle the glazed surface.

She stretches, not wanting to move. She doesn’t remember being so liquid-boned in a long, long time. 

There’s no sound from outside. Usually, there are muffled voices from the TV as Yevgeny watches the morning news, the sound of him rummaging through the cupboards, cups clinking, the purring of the espresso machine. 

There’s nothing now. Did he leave for work already? How long did she sleep?

It’s this thought that brings it all crumbling down, the sea imploding, the light burning hotter until it hurts her eyes, and even then it continues to burn deeper, down her throat, down her chest, down every synapse of her body.

_“I hope it hurts,” she spat in his face, just hours ago. “And I hope it hurts for a long, long time.”_

And it does. It hurts. _Her._ Sharp, crippling pain shoots through her body, pulling the knees up to her chest. 

He didn’t flinch. When she dumped it on him, all of it, the full load of the rage and despair that’d been swelling and brewing inside her this whole time - he did not say a word. He just waited, holding her bulging stare, waited for her to say more, or to leave. And she did, she left. She stumbled back to her room, crawled under covers, and curled in a ball. She was hoping she’d cry herself to sleep, finally, she’d been craving a good cry for a long time, but by the time her head hit the pillow she was empty again, bone dry. And she blacked out. 

And she _slept._ For the first time in _months._ She slept for…she looks at the time - _Holy… -_ for nearly _ten hours._

She checks his room, checks the bathroom, the kitchen. There’s a part of her that’s intensely relieved that he isn’t there, and then there’s another part, the part that feels like shit - no, not just shit, like there’s shit and then there’s fifty feet of scum, and _then_ her - that wishes he were. What she would say if he were, if she had to face him, she doesn’t know - probably nothing. But she needs to see, the hurt she’s caused, needs to assess the damage, see if it can be undone, and how.

On the kitchen counter is a tall glass of water next to her pills. The espresso machine is on, no doubt intentionally so that she wouldn’t have to wait a good twenty minutes to warm it up.

She makes a latte, downs her pills, folds herself on top of the high stool next to the kitchen island, and thinks.

She misses him. That’s the truth. She hates that she does, but she does nonetheless. Without him it’s too loud, in her head, like he’s the white noise that hushes the voices, cancels them out, dulls the screeching, mind-numbing dissonance of an off-beat requiem that plays on and on.

He doesn’t talk _to_ her. He talks _around_ her. He _is_ around her, all the time, doing his thing, living his life, on the phone, messaging, tidying up, cooking, watching the news, sleeping. He’s like a fuzzy cocoon that stretches around her bubble. 

And that’s gone now.

The pain of it reaches deep in her chest, palming the place where her ribcage ends and squeezing with such force that it punches the air up her throat with a small, pained sound.

She fucked it up. Not that there was anything _to_ fuck up, really. But it feels like she did all the same. 

It shouldn't have mattered, whe he did to her then, what he did to her after. Not anymore. Yet somehow, last night, it did, more than anything, and she doesn’t know why. 

He won’t throw her out on the street, no, she knows this much. Knowing him, he probably won’t bring it up, either. He’ll come home, they’ll have dinner, watch some TV, go for a long walk, he’ll be talking about the memories of the places they pass, from his youth, from his childhood, and she’ll hang on each word, like she always does. 

He’s like an unfaltering stream that way, grounded, gauged, measured. She’s never known anyone with his capacity to just _be,_ be around, be present. 

She hasn't known many people with his capacity to love, either. 

He loves his country. She loves hers, too, but his is different. It’s pained, doleful, overprotective. As if this grim, somber land torn by the centuries-old oda of misery and injustice, is a frail, sickly bird on the palm of his hand.

He loves his parents. She hasn’t met them, and she doesn’t understand a word he’s saying when he’s on the phone with his mother, but she’s never seen his eyes veiled with more soul-crushing tenderness, nor his smile so soft.

He loved his brother. There’s a picture of him on the small, wooden dresser by the front door. Sometimes he stands there, thumb grazing the metal edge of the frame, his face impenetrable, but his breaths coming on shuddering tides.

He loves Moscow. She’s never met anyone so profoundly, desperately, completely in love with a city. They love each other, she thinks. At least that’s what it feels like when they take long strolls every night. It’s like watching a dance of two lovers, the way it swirls around him in silvery maelstroms of poplar down, the way his feet touch the pavement, light and seamless, like he himself is one of those populus trees that are everywhere, deep, meaty roots stretching from under his feet in all directions; like he is a part of it, always has been, and it of him.

He loves _her._ She knows this. Known for some time now. Thinking back, she probably should’ve known in Islamabad, by the fountain, the way something flickered across his face as he rose to leave, the way his hand lingered on her shoulder, a beat too long, just past enough, before he did. 

They don’t talk about the asylum. Before last night, they hadn’t so much as mentioned the word since Kohat. But she knows, she feels it, not just that in a place where she lost her memories, he had lost a part of himself, but that the time which she struggles so hard to remember, he would've sold his soul to forget.

  
  


He’s home later than usual. From where she’s sitting cross-legged on her bed she can hear him drop the keys into the large bowl on the dresser, take off his shoes, hang his coat. She can hear him make his way to the closed door of her room where he stops, hesitates a moment as she imagines him listening in, then softly taps at the thick wood with his knuckles.

“Carrie?”

“You can come in,” she says.

He pushes the door a crack open, peeking in at first, then further, ajar, leaning the whole six-foot-three of him clad in black turtleneck and dark-grey jeans against the doorframe.

“Hey,” he says, and by the look on his face and by the way his voice rises and falls through that single syllable she can tell how intensely relieved he is to find her in better shape.

She smiles. “Hey yourself.”

He eyes her for a long moment, chinned-up, half-lidded, with a tight, lopsided grin. “You made dinner,” he notes, almost matter-of-factly, pointedly less incredulous than he ought to be.

She rolls her eyes. “Ordered in.”

“That works.”

“Hungry?”

“Pff… _famished.”_

“Long day?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe.”

She puts the book on her nightstand and peels herself off the bed. “I guess we should eat, then,” she says, pushing past him, as she imagines him following her into the living room with an amusedly perplexed stare. 

  
  


They eat in silence. _He_ eats, that is, obliterating his half-pounder in _literally_ five bites while she drags her fork in concentric circles amid the arugula, olives, feta, and cherry tomatoes on her plate. 

“Sleep well?” he asks when he’s done, balancing his weight on his elbows over the table. 

Rolling her eyes, she huffs a chuckle. “Like a dead man.”

“Good. _Good.”_

“Yeah.”

There comes the silence. 

“I’ll tidy up,” he says, rising. 

She stops him. “No. No. I got this.”

“Carrie, I can tidy up. I’m tired, I’m not dead.”

More silence. 

“Look…” She draws a breath. 

_About last night,_ she wants to say - too dismissive. _I’m sorry_ \- too vague. _I know I fucked up_ \- too obvious.

“We should talk.”

She half-expects him to say that it’s fine, that they don’t have to. But he doesn’t. Instead, he reaches across the table to squeeze her hand, once, and nods.

“Ok.”

  
  
  


They settle into the living room. Yevgeny - cross-legged on the couch, Carrie, leaning forwards, elbows on knees, two feet across from him on top of the coffee table.

He waits. She thinks. Time passes.

The lump in her throat is so dense she can barely breathe around it, let alone talk. “What I said…” she strains, and that’s all she’s got before her voice caught in her throat and her face is a quivering mess.

He makes a move to lean forward, take her hand, but she shakes her head vigorously, pulling back. “No. Don’t. Just… don’t.”

He lifts his palms. “Ok.”

She breathes. But the more she does, the more it feels like her eyes have been spitted by searing iron.

“I can’t…” she chokes, working her jaws, her breath, her voice, all at the same time. “I can’t… go _on_ like this,” she manages finally, holding his stare. “I _can’t.”_ And the words come, crushing. “I keep _thinking,_ like I can find a way out, but there _isn’t._ I keep thinking I can fix this, that I _need_ to fix this, _all_ of this… but I can’t, can I? Because this is it. The one thing I won’t figure out, the one hole I’ll never claw my way out of.”

She looks at him, part-expectedly, part-pleading, part something she’s afraid to name. He swallows, leans even further into the couch and clasps his hands near his shoulder with one arm bent on top of the back cushion. “But you will,” he says, calmly, softly. “Claw your way out of the hole. You always do.”

“No. I _won’t._ Not this time. That’s what I’ve been saying. Because there _is_ no way out. This is it. This. Right here. End of the rope.”

“There is _always_ a way out, Carrie” he says. “And from what I’ve seen, you know this better than anyone.”

“No,” she shakes her head. “ _No._ Once. Maybe. But not from this. Not anymore.”

“I’ve seen you dig yourself out of worse.”

She scoffs, flinging her arm around her. “Worse than _this?”_

“Yes.” Where his hands are latched he frees two thumbs. “Look. You said Max was always there for you, wherever you’d go he’d end up there, by your side.” Her chin wobbles. She gulps, and nods. “But Max wasn’t there when you got the flight recorder, or when you figured out a way to have my government release its contents.” She looks away, sucking a sharp intake of breath. He shifts his weight on the couch to that same side, forcing her eyes back on him. “At the asylum,” he continues, “you said there was a man… someone you worked with, closely… someone who cared for you.”

Her throat is a tracery of bulging veins and strained muscles. “Quinn.”

He nods. “Yes. Quinn. You said… Quinn saved you. Many times. Including the day he died.”

She rasps, “Yes.”

Yevgeny untangles his limbs and shifts his body forward, inches away from her face. “I know you think this, Carrie. That all those people, people you cared about, that they saved you...”

“Because they _did.”_

He shakes his head. “I don’t believe it. I don’t think _you_ believe it. You know what I think?”

She tilts her head, waiting. 

“I think those people helped you, yes. But I don’t think anyone’s ever _saved_ you, Carrie. I think whenever you _really_ needed saving, the only person who could possibly do it was _you.”_

Partway into the interminable pause that follows, he lets go of her stare, gets up, and disappears into her room. When he comes back, he’s carrying a small paper-back book she’s seen before on one of the bookshelves next to the window. 

Without a word, he resumes his place on the couch, and, for a long moment, just riffles through it. 

“Yuri Lermontov,” he answers the puzzled look in her eyes. “Russian poet from the 19th century. When I was in school, we had to memorise a lot of his poems. Learn by heart and read out loud in front of the class the next day. Nightmare,” he chuckles. “I hated it. It wasn’t until college that I really learnt to love his work.”

He finds it, finally, pressing his palm between the pages to keep it open. 

“This poem, one of my favorites, is called The Sail. It tells a story of a little white sail roaming the seas, all alone. It doesn’t know what it seeks, or what it runs from. But it can’t stop. It sails through storms and winds. Not because it has to. But because it thinks that it’s only in the heart of a storm that it can find real peace.”

He takes her hand, opens her palm, and softly places the book on top of it. 

“You’re the lonely sail, Carrie. Maybe we both are. And those people, the people who you say saved you, maybe they took you there, partway. Maybe they helped you. But they couldn’t survive in those waters, nobody could. Not like you can.”

Her tears are rolling free now, and he touches her face, softly, gently, lifting it up to his. “You will always find a way out, Carrie. Always. I’ve seen you take on the world. What’s a little luxury life in one of the most glamorous capitals on the planet?”

She stifles a sob, or a laugh, she can’t even tell anymore. “When you put it _that_ way.”

“I do,” he smiles. “I put it that way. Because it _is_ that way. In a year, or two, or three, you’ll find it again, that perfect storm you’ve been chasing. And in the heart of it, you _will_ find your peace. You have to believe it. You always do.”

That said, with their hands still connected around the poetry book, he closes the distance and rests his forehead on hers. 

They sit like this for some time, the imperfect spade of two bodies.

“Ok?” he whispers at last.

She nods, the motion sending his head bobbing as well, which makes him laugh, which makes _her_ laugh, which makes him cradle her face in his hands and press a soft, breathy kiss to the line of her hair. 

“Ok.”

  
  
  


Later, she’s in bed, still quiet, deep in thought. He sits on the edge, rubbing his thumb on the back of her hand where it’s latched onto his, watching her eyes as they gradually mist over.

“Would you like to go this weekend?”

Drawn out of her reverie, she blinks, and frowns. 

“Stary Arbat,” he smiles. “Would you like to go with me?”

Face twitching, she nods. “Yes.”

Minutes later, convinced she’s fast asleep, he’s about to rise when her eyes flutter open.

“Yevgeny?”

He sits back. “Mm?”

She snuggles the side of her face onto the fold of the pillow. “Does Sasha Belov get the girl in the end?”

It’s the first time she’s seen his face wobble. Ever. “You remembered,” he smirks, but his eyes glisten.

She wiggles closer, flips to her back “I’ve been trying to find the name of that fucking movie all day. Googled _‘russian three musketeers’_ \- nothing. Found some _actual_ Russian Three Musketeers movie from the seventies.”

When, laughing, he tells her the name, the sense if relief if disproportionately overwhelming. Like it's a small victory, one puzzle out of the way, first of many to come.

When he says nothing more, she raises an eyebrow. “So?”

“So _what?”_

“Does he get the girl or not?”

Under the covers he finds her hand, pulling it out and planting a boyish smile of a lingering kiss where her palm creases. 

“Carrie… he’s a tall, handsome Russian officer. Trust me. He gets the girl.”

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The lyrics to Yuri Lermontov's poem The Sail translated to English:

A lone white sail on the horizon  
Upon the azure sea doth stand.  
What seeks he in this foreign region?  
What left he in his native land?  
  
The whistling breeze the mast is bending,  
The playful waves around him rise.  
Ah! not for happiness he searches,  
And not from happiness he flies.  
  
The sun is bright as gold above him,  
Light spray below, a snowy fleece;  
But he, rebellious, seeks the tempest,  
As though the storms could bring him peace!

A fanvid of the four-part miniseries Yevgeny loved as a young child (because we all did, boys and girls, and I boldly speak for all Russians because it's the truth). The song is from the original score.


End file.
